Month: November 2016

Election Day: 6:58pm

What a shitshow. The stakes in elections this century always seem to be high. The 2004 election, as a friend reminded me this afternoon, really did a number on me. I couldn’t fathom how so many people could take an honest look at the performance of George W. Bush as president and decide he had earned another term. The man was incompetent, and some of his people were war criminals.

Now here we are in 2016 and the most unqualified major party candidate in American history will probably find 60 million Americans voting for him. Incredible. That’s 60 million of our fellow citizens who are incapable of recognizing the danger Donald Trump represents to the United States and the world.

Only a couple of minutes before some real returns start coming in. New Hampshire is making me nervous, but NBC just reported Hispanic turnout is up by 4 million in Florida. If that is accurate, this night is probably already over.

Election Day: 6:00pm

And they’re off! Polls have now closed in eastern Kentucky and in most of Indiana. Those two states are solidly in the red, but Democrat Evan Bayh’s race to get back into the Senate is very important for control of the upper house. Hopefully there will be reporting shortly after the remaining polling sites in Indiana close at 7.

Election Day: 12:11pm

I just returned from voting. My district in NYC has been good to me since I moved to this neighborhood. There has never been a line. In contrast, a buddy in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (elevation 16 feet above sea level and flat as a pancake), had to wait 90 minutes to vote. Out in San Francisco, another friend waited 5 minutes. This is only the most important day in our country, and it comes around every 4 years. No need to get it right.

Missile Test Predicts! 2016 Degenerate Gambler Edition

The Oval Office Thunderdome desk hasn’t been all that busy this election cycle, but that certainly isn’t because of a lack of subject matter. This election has been among the most anguished in all of American history. Much of the electorate is in disbelief that someone with as many disqualifications for public office still has a shot at winning the Oval Office. Continue reading “Missile Test Predicts! 2016 Degenerate Gambler Edition”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Independence Day: Resurgence, or, Who Are the People on the Boat?

This fucking movie, I swear to God. More than once while I was watching Independence Day: Resurgence did I utter that profaneness. It’s just such a silly movie. It’s also breathtaking in scale, as evidenced by a moment when the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, which also happens to normally be in Dubai, is dropped on London. This is a movie whose aspirations for an international audience are plain to see. There’s the requisite inclusion of token Chinese characters, and even a scene where a Chinese city is sucked up into the sky. That’s how one can know the Chinese have arrived as a world power. We are now destroying their cities in apocalyptic movies. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Independence Day: Resurgence, or, Who Are the People on the Boat?”

Half-Baked Ideas: Baseball

Major League Baseball games are too long, especially during the postseason. Lengthy commercial breaks and players slowing down the game as the pressure mounts in later innings take the designed, leisurely pace of the game and grind it to a halt. Because of the very nature of the game, changing things to speed up the game is difficult without altering the game too much. How much is too much is up for debate, but baseball is more than just the sum of its rules. More than any other sport, baseball’s past is still relevant to players’ and fans’ senses of the sport. It is a game hostile to disruptions of its core elements, leading it to grow increasingly anachronistic as time goes on. It’s a sport ripe for some half-baked ideas. Continue reading “Half-Baked Ideas: Baseball”